Maelstrom
by August Night
Summary: Taylor Hebert didn't trigger inside the locker. Instead things only got worse, until one Saturday, the Endbringer sirens started shrieking. Leviathan was headed to Brockton Bay, and Taylor Hebert would get a different power... Be prepared for darkness, violence, justified angst and just a little bit of Taylor/Lisa shipping.
1. Gather Storm 1-1

Author's Note:

Hello everyone. I'm new to writing fanfiction, but not to writing in general. Critiques are welcome, as is lavish praise and snickerdoodles.

I've been lurking for a little while, but I've finally gotten up the nerve to start posting some of my ideas. This is the first.

A couple of things before we start: for those of you who haven't read it, Worm is a rather dark world in which some people, called parahumans, have superpowers. This will be an altpower fic, in which the protagonist, Taylor Hebert, triggers with a different power. Now, a slight problem that I have with altpower!fics, much as I love them, is that WoG is that the trigger event relates to the power, and fewer writers than I would like include that aspect in their work. In cannon, Taylor triggers in a locker, and her feelings of alienation give her a master/thinker power. The same situation could result in a different power, but it would probably be something similar. So, in order to change Taylor's power, I'm also changing her trigger event.

Now, on to what to expect from this fic. This is going to get dark. All of Worm is a dark place, but this is going to get bad. Eventual M rating, probably just for violence. Additionally, we will be sailing the Skittertale ship (Taylor/Lisa). For some reason, even though cannon Taylor is straight, my headcannon has her being gay. I think it's because she takes a very masculine roll in the story...

I would like to acknowledge the debts I owe. First to Wildbow, for creating this wonderful world and letting us use it. Second to all the other talented Worm fanfiction writers out there. I will probably end up using ideas from some of you, and I'll try to acknowledge it when I do. If anyone spots something they think is taken from someone else, let me know and I'll give credit where credit is due. I am forgetful, so I apologize in advance if that happens.

Lastly, don't expect any sort of routine update schedule. I'd rather not make a commitment I can't keep.

Anyway, I think that's it. Please let me know what you think.

 **Gathering Storm 1.1**

Trapped. The crush of bodies surrounded me, scared and anxious people taking shallow gulps of the limited air supply. My claustrophobia, an ever-present gnawing in the back of my mind, surged to the fore. It hadn't been this bad since the locker. Even the memory of Sofia shoving me into that cramped space, walls closing in on me, the stench of blood and fetid waste barreling into my nostrils and mouth, the darkness, the slats of light that mocked me-

No. Have to keep a clear head. Have to stay calm. That's what all the posters said. Just stay calm. No panicking. Please. I eyed the people around me, some better dressed than others, the best dressed of them shooting nervous glances at the worst. My mind buzzed, anxiety rising from the pit of my stomach and flooding my brain. God, I can't stand this. Too many people. Too many.

Dad was on the other side of the room. I could barely see him; only his height and mine let me identify his slowly receding brown hair. He shot a glance towards me, his eyes catching mine briefly before returning to the man across from him. The two of them, and several surrounding men and women, had taken up something of a leadership position in the shelter, rationing out the bottles of water and granola bars, making sure that the elderly and pregnant got first choice of the limited selection of seats. I could see that Dad was in his element; hell, I could see some familiar faces from the dockworker's union helping him out. And here I was, alone amidst a group of women I neither knew nor cared to. The ones that weren't drugged up were rather clearly prostitutes, but it was safer in this part of the shelter than with the opportunists.

There was a group of girls my age somewhere around here, but to be honest I'd rather stick with the prostitutes. At least they wouldn't judge me for being a goddamn beanpole, or the acne I just couldn't get rid of, or the general shabbiness of my clothes. Come to think of it, I couldn't actually remember the last time I bought new clothing. Sweatshirts and jeans were very forgiving.

The lights above us flickered, causing a wave of murmurs to sweep across the room. It's funny, I think, how all of us came to be here today. I was probably just using the line of thought as a distraction from the press of bodies and already stale air, but whatever. Wouldn't be the first time I lost myself in my thoughts to escape something.

Shit, I can't even keep a train of thought running without something interrupting it, like how that bulge in the ratty-looking man a few yards away from me's pants was probably a gun, or how the woman next to me stank of cigarettes and overdone perfume. I bend over in the little space I have, trying to segregate some air from everyone else. Think about something else, Taylor Hebert.

All of us in this shelter, going about our ordinary days, in our ordinary lives. Me waking up to a Saturday, going for a run just because if I stopped going I don't think I'd have the strength to ever start again. Breakfast spent avoiding my father's eyes, refusing to see the guilt there. The anguish. It's why I never told him about the bullying, the constant rain of petty abuse I'd weathered for so long. I couldn't bear to see the look in my father's eyes when he realized, after the locker, that he couldn't help me. That he was just as helpless as I was, that even the famed Hebert rage was nothing compared to the indifference of bureaucracy and the cowardice of bystanders.

That his little girl had been shoved into her own defiled locker and left there for three hours, and he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

He looked so different now, alive and energized, staring down a situation he could actually fix.

Ever since my mother died and Emma, my best friend, turned against me, I'd been hanging on for him. Even after the locker, when nothing had changed, when the usual puddle of juice waited for me on my seat in Mr. Gladly's class, when Sophia shoved me down the stairs and I twisted an ankle and limped all the way home, even then I persevered. I survived. I though about killing myself. I thought about it the same way I'd consider going to the mall, or watching a movie. Just another option. But I didn't take it, because if my mother's death had hurt my father, mine would destroy him. And I couldn't do that to him.

I wouldn't.

The shelter shuddered abruptly, knocking a few people off their feet. More than one girlish scream filled the cramped space.

It was just another Saturday in a line of Saturdays, just like the week that preceded it was no different than the ones before it. Another footstep in the sand. I remember wondering if that was how people did it, the ones who lasted for months at sea or got marooned on an island for years. Just one step at a time, keep your head down and think of something else.

And yet this Saturday, today, was broken from all the others by a shrill cry that echoed from hidden loudspeakers all across the city. Something new in the monotony of my life. Like every new twist I could remember, it was for the worst.

The Endbringer sirens were going off.

As Dad grabbed me and headed for the shelter nearing us, I found myself trying to find a silver lining, and succeeding. Maybe Leviathan would destroy Winslow High for me. Hell, maybe Emma, Sophia and Madison would die. That last thought was kind of morbid, but hey, it wasn't like I hadn't thought of it before. Unlikely, though. They were probably in an Endbringer shelter for rich people, not stuck trying to prevent an unconscious woman from drooling on their sneakers.

Screw them. If there was one good thing about Leviathan deciding to attempt to sink Brockton Bay into the Atlantic, it was not having to see Emma smiling at me as she insinuated that it was my fault my mother was dead.

The shelter shuddered again, and I wondered abruptly how it was going for the defending capes. Leviathon wasn't quite as deadly to capes as Behemoth, or as terrifying as the Simurgh, but his civilian death toll was often the highest of the three. Due to the whole sink-the-city thing he had going on. I pictured Alexandria somewhere out there, leading the charge against the Endbringer. I had wanted to be her when I was a kid, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much her life had to suck. Constantly expected to be the front line against everything, barely praised for succeeding and being lambasted for every failure. The pressure had to be immense.

I looked over to my Dad, feeling nauseous from the stifling air and perfumes around me. God, this shelter was too small. Just a breath of fresh air...

Dad looked over at me, wiping his forehead and smiling. I could practically feel the sense of accomplishment coming from him all the way across the room.

Which is why I stared, uncomprehending, as Leviathon smashed through the ceiling of the shelter and my father vanished in a spray of blood.


	2. Gathering Storm 1-2

**Gathering Storm 1.2**

My mother was an English Professor, and so I grew up reading the sorts of books that get shoved down kids' throats in high school. I remember reading Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and for some reason, as I stared at the place where my father had just been slaughtered by Leviathan, a quote came back to me. Something the Queen said to Alice about believing six impossible things before breakfast.

I don't know why that particular quote came to me in that moment between moments, as Leviathan landed in the shelter with a thundering crash I couldn't hear, as the storm that the concrete had kept out swept in behind him. It was just that watching an Endbringer shove a fist _through_ my father was an Impossible Thing, and no part of me believed it. I had just...missaw. That can happen, right? People mishear things all the time. That's right, it was an optical illusion. Like those heads that are actually a vase. My father is actually a vase, only now that I've seen the heads I can't unsee them, and my vision keeps switching between them.

Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead.

Leviathan lashed out, whips of water from his water-shadow cutting into the mass of screaming people, all in slow motion. Blood, just another kind of water, spraying left and right.

Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead.

Water was pouring into the shelter from every conceivable angle, already reaching up to my knees. A laser wide as a car smashed into Leviathon from above, to no visible effect.

Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead.

And then everyone was dead around me, and the beast turned and looked at me. I knew that look. I had seen it in Sophia's eyes day after unrelenting day. They were the eyes of a predator. And I was the prey. I was always the prey. The realization came to me then, as a figure that could only be Alexandria smashed into the Endbringer, pinning it against the far wall of the shelter. The whole structure shook with the impact, and only the water level, now at my waist, stopped me from stumbling.

Leviathan was a killer.

My father was dead.

I have no reason to live anymore.

Leviathan had thrown off Alexandria, and didn't even glance at me as it's tail sent a water-whip towards my midsection.

I didn't even try to avoid it. I wasn't nearly as afraid to die as I was to live.

This was the lowest I would ever get.

 _Trajectory._

 _Agreement._

 _Destination._

 _Agreement._

The water-whip passed straight through my stomach and impacted the concrete behind me, scoring a line in it.

I didn't die.

I was almost disappointed.

I looked down at my stomach, trying to figure out why I wasn't dead, only to see that my stomach wasn't there anymore. In its place, wind whipped back and forth wildly, constrained to the shape of my body. At least I thought it was; it was hard to tell. I poked it, my finger going straight through. Hmm.

I had been enough of a cape geek in a previous life to recognize what that meant. I had powers. I was a parahuman.

I was a parahuman, and Dad was dead.

I hate my life.

The water level was creeping up to my stomach, which had faded back into regular stomach. I needed to get out, I realized, if I didn't want to drown. Then again... No. Dad wouldn't want me to die here. I had to hold onto that. I had to hold onto...

Huh.

There was a new thing in my head. It felt like a slider, the kind that makes a light get brighter or dimmer as you move it up or down. I could feel it somehow, the same proprioception that told me where my hands were somehow locating it in the middle of my brain. And just like a finger, I could move it. It was currently at the very bottom. Zero percent, it felt like.

Well, it's not like my day could get any worse.

I pushed the slider up a little.

I felt it immediately. All of the emotions I was feeling, so many I felt like I would burn and freeze and explode with them, the fear and the grief and the anxiety and the horror, lessened. Just drained away a little. I gasped reflexively, which lead to another discovery - I was wispy. Instead of just my stomach, my entire body had dissolved partway into wind. I could still feel everything; in fact, I could feel _more_ than everything. New senses opened themselves up to me. I could feel airflow in a way human skin never could, every eddy and whirl of high-pressure pockets collapsing into lower-pressure pockets, every pull of the wind. I could even change them. It was like breathing.

Other senses hovered at the edge of my awareness. Something about static electricity, and more about temperature. I could feel my mind sharpening just a little bit, thoughts becoming clearer, more rational. It felt like I was seeing the sun for the first time, or taking a breath after having gone for so long without air. I couldn't remember the last time I felt this good.

I pushed the slider further, inching it up to fifty percent.

My senses expanded further, covering the entire shelter, and my mind expanded to compensate. Emotion fell away, and I found myself more clearheaded than I'd been since Mom had died. So many things that I had never understood became obvious. That look in Dad's eyes wasn't my fault, and neither was Mom's death. Sophia was clearly mentally unstable and violent in a way that suggested she had other victims than just me. Emma had gone through a traumatic experience while I was at camp and latched onto the first person that made her feel safe. So many things. The sheer gross negligence of the staff at Winslow High suggested that something was protecting Emma, Sophia and Madison, something bigger than just a lawyer father or good looks. I was an idiot for taking that abuse for so long when just beating the shit out of Sophia would have stopped it. A week's suspension was easily worth an end to the bullying.

In fact, I had powers now. Granted, I wasn't exactly sure what they did or how to use them, but I would learn. Already I was manipulating the eddies and whirls of wind within and around me, and suddenly I realized that I could control the water too. Not to the same extent, but I could. I realized that I was more or less already flying, as the shelter was now an underground lake. Crackles of static charge surged around me, and with a thought I put them together and _moved_ them. A blinding flash of light and concussive wave later, I realized that I could make lightning.

My power was obvious.

I was a thunderstorm.

I laughed, the winds within me howling my amusement into the greater storm of Leviathan's making.

I was a goddamn _thunderstorm_.

And I could feel my power growing restless. A nudge here, a whisper there. Egging me on. _Push the slider higher. Become._ I could feel it, the desire to be more, to grow, to encompass, to exercise my wrath upon everything and everyone who ever harmed me. And with it would come the relief of rationality, of the cold clarity that staved off the depression I could sense waiting to bury me. I didn't have it in me to fight the urge. I didn't want to.

I pushed the slider all the way up. One hundred percent.

That was much better. I cracked my neck, or at least the vast swirling column of air that I was's top tilted slightly.

I was finally free from all those clouding emotions. Fear. Remorse. Grief. All gone, leaving only the clarity of the storm. I had several tasks to accomplish, but most would have to wait. I could feel him in the distance now, the so-called Endbringer. I felt him in the shifting pockets of air around him, in every droplet of the never-ending flood that poured out of him.

That fucker killed Taylor's father.

But I wasn't Taylor anymore.

I was _Maelstrom_.

And I was going to make Leviathan _pay._


	3. Interlude a

**Interlude a**

 **Alexandria**

Alexandria smashed into a building in downtown Brockton Bay, bleeding off momentum as the reinforced concrete and steel girders crumpled away from her like tissue paper. She tumbled all the way through the building, shooting out and into the street behind it with a thunderous crash. Pavement flew everywhere.

She rose, hacking up the bit of water that Leviathan had managed to force into her lungs, and took a moment to regain her focus.

Everything around her was dark, caught in the storm that always followed Leviathan onto land. Water fell from the sky, somehow hitting harder than it should have. Granted, she barely felt it, but she could tell from the way it splashed into the torrents that rose from the sewer system and flooded the streets around her. Cars were being swept up like stray branches on the edge of an overflowing stream. The water was already spotted with detritus, although thankfully few bodies.

For some reason, Leviathan had been targeting shelters. Not unheard of, for the Endbringers to force capes to sacrifice themselves unnecessarily, but the beast was practically ignoring them in favor of its search.

 _Chubster, Deceased. C-5._

She glanced at her armband. Barely twenty capes had perished so far, and the waves were smaller than the ones she was used to, Eidolon's ice barrier managing too hold them back remarkably well.

A nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach made the heroine curse for the thousandth time that precogs didn't work well on the Endbringers. She had a feeling that whatever Leviathan's goal was, it was _bad_.

A dull rumble sounded from across the city, and lightening briefly flashed between the clouds. Alexandria caught a glimpse of Leviathan, vivid in stark relief against a backdrop of ruin. Legend was hitting the Endbringer from countless angles, with the rest of the blaster contingent perhaps adding up to equaling him. Perhaps. Leviathan was ignoring them in favor of unearthing yet another shelter, his skin melting and sloughing off from his face as the blasters took the opportunity to hit him with everything they had.

An errant water whip caught a flying cape, and Alexandria's armband duly stated,

 _Don the Quick, Deceased. C-5._

Something was wrong with this picture. Something was out of place. But as intelligent as she was, Alexandria couldn't think of anything.

In the end, though, it didn't matter. Leviathan would either reach his goal or he wouldn't, and her best chance to effect the outcome was at the heart of the fighting.

So be it.

 **Lung**

Lung breathed in slowly. Even now, the beast was most likely slaughtering the defending forces.

It was all so pointless.

He had learned the truth in Kyushu.

The Endbringers were not foes, to be fought and burned and beaten. One did not subdue the Ocean. One could not fight a volcano.

In a sense, the creatures were simply the expression of a principle. All things must end. All things must die.

He believed the English word was entropy. The reduction of all to chaos.

They had come to him, first asking, then pleading, as he waited in his cell. After being defeated by the Tinker commander of the Protectorate, he had thought of the day that Kyushu fell. The day lesser men called his greatest triumph.

It was not. The boot had no need to step on the errant ant, after the hive had already been destroyed.

No. He would wait here. Let the insects mill about in their confusion.

Even the Dragon knew when to bow.

 **Tattletale**

She watched the fight with a sickening sense of certainty.

Leviathan was holding back.

It was easy to see, situated as she was near the triage center that had been set up almost immediately by some cape Strider had teleported in first. Dragon had been kind enough to let Lisa see the fight through her drone's eyes after Lisa's explanation of her power. It was paying dividends.

 _Water source is extra-dimensional, likely finite but too large to matter. Can manifest water through surface of body; blows do not interfere with dimensional transfer: transfer one way, transfer by choice, transfer controlled by Leviathan._

Well, that was obvious, but

 _Transfer controlled by Leviathan; transfer continues even in wounded areas; transfer not limited to Leviathan's surface layer. Leviathan's water echo is a decoy: can generate extra-dimensional water at greater range._

"Are you sure?" asked Dragon's voice, low and serious and probably artificial. Lisa had been mouthing whatever her power had thrown at her in real time.

"Don't trust me?" Lisa tried to grin her trademark grin and failed. This was bad.

Dragon sighed, which Lisa noted as an odd thing to make an artificial version of. Then she stopped-

"Tattletale, I want everything you can give me on Leviathan's objective."

Lisa nodded to herself, and focused on the screens in front of her, opening her power full stop.

 _Leviathan in Brockton Bay, objective is within city limits. Wave patterns compared to previous encounters indicate Leviathan is not here to sink the city. Objective is in Brockton Bay; objective is person? place? thing? person. Targeting of shelters. Not exactly sure what it is looking for. Person, cape? Cape. Leviathan is looking for a cape. Cape among the defenders? No. Cape native to Brockton Bay? Likely no. Cape recently arrived to Brockton Bay._

Well that begs a whole lot of questions. Leviathan was targeting a cape in Brockton Bay. But how? How would Leviathan, last seen near Madagascar, know about a specific cape in Brockton Bay? Lisa turned her power on the question.

 _The Simurgh told him._

Oh, shit.

 **Vista**

Wards weren't really supposed to be fighting Endbringers, and her parents hadn't exactly signed the permission form, but Missy had gotten rather adept at faking their signatures over time.

And like hell she was going to let Gallant face Leviathan without her to pull him out of a tight space.

God, that was almost like something Clockblocker would say.

But even though she was far from the front lines, she was still contributing: moving heroes and villains around the battlefield as best she could, trying to hamper Leviathan's movements. Twisting space so that rain wouldn't fall on the triage center.

She felt the disturbance before she saw it.

It felt strange, kind of like a person to her power but also not, like that Ward Weld did when she met him last year. But instead of a rather good-looking, if metallic, face and chiseled abs, this person/not person space was the size of a building, and growing. She turned to look at it, squeezing the space between herself and it to get a better look through the darkness. It was centered above one of the Endbringer shelters that Leviathan had already destroyed. Had someone in there triggered? But with what kind of power? The space was growing rapidly, spilling out onto the streets and simultaneously climbing into the sky. Wind began to funnel into it, water carried along for the ride, and the whole thing began to _spin._

In an instant Missy was inside the triage tent, and in another she was standing in the room with the thinkers. Several were Protectorate, looking over data and talking quickly, serious looks on their faces. She noted Tattletale surrounded by monitors in a corner, talking to a microphone. She was that villain that Armsmaster had saved from Lung, along with her team. She had escaped, but her teammates had been captured by Assault and Battery as they arrived on the scene. Except for the dog girl, who had tried to fight Lung. She had been beyond help by the time Panacea had arrived.

Missy felt a flash of nervousness at speaking to full Protectorate members, and a villain to boot, but dammit, Missy Biron was a woman of Action.

"You need to look outside!" she blurted out. They all turned to stare at her.

"Shit," said Tattletale, her face going pale.

Dragon's voice came in over the armband on Missy's left arm. "Unless my sensors have all decided to malfunction at once..."

"There's a new cape," said Missy. "And I think she can control the weather."


End file.
